(The following is an adaptation of parts relevant to the railways of
Lebanon and appears by kind permission of The Continental Railway Circle.)

4. MIDDLE EAST FORCES [pp. 45-48]

The events of the 1939-45 war resulted in an enormous increase in
traffic throughout the area and this section deals particularly with
the effect on the railways in Egypt and Palestine where the military
efforts came specifically under GHQ Middle East Forces in Cairo. In
193940 the ESR alone carried 33 million passengers and 6 1/4 million
tons of freight; in 19434 the corresponding figures were 58 million
and 81/2 million (excluding military freight), and it is small wonder
that so many extra locomotives had to be brought in to deal with the
situation. The transport of troops was naturally a major item and one
particular instance may be quoted here as an example of what had to be
done: on 18th July 1942 the Queen Elizabeth disembarked 9400 troops at
Suez in 13 1/2 hours, using a flotilla of 10 Nile ferries, 2 Z-craft and
2 double-decker launches, and these were immediately dispersed - 5250 by
9 special trains, 950 by road and 3200 to transit camps.

To begin with, the most important strategic line was the one westwards
from Alexandria to Mersa Matruh. The first sections had been
constructed by the Khedive to serve some of his estates and were
generally referred to as the Maryut (or sometimes Daira Khassa)
Railway. By 1914 a standard gauge line went as far as Daba with a
metre gauge extension through Fuka, but in that year the system was
purchased by the State and, after being used for a time to supply
British forces in the Senussi campaign, most of the line was then
dismantled and the materials used for the wartime railways being built
in the Sinai. After hostilities ceased, the ESR gradually restored the
line, on standard gauge, and by 1935 it had reached Fuka again. The
British Government requested its extension to Mersa Matruh on
strategic grounds and this was completed in April 1936 with the ESR
contributing half the cost.

In October 1940 New Zealand Royal Engineers began an extension
westwards in preparation for a military offensive; to climb the
escarpment behind Matruh the junctibn was actually at Similla, the
site having been previously fixed by the ESR. Work stopped in January
1941 but restarted in June when changes in the war situation made it
necessary again. In September the line reached an important meeting
place of desert tracks known to the British troops as Charing Cross,
but at the request of Egypt the name of the station was altered to
Mohalafa ("Alliance"). At Misheifa (November) a large circular or
balloon-type depot was laid out to deceive enemy planes, and a dummy
railhead built further west got most of the bombs. Capuzzo was reached
in February 1942 and being by this time in Libya they felt free to
honour the various Dominion troops by allotting station names like
Rumbalbelipur for the Indians and Waikikamoukau for the New
Zealanders; alas these two proved too long for the train tablets and
were soon altered to Musaid and Sandilane.

Belhamed was reached in June 1942, with tactical railhead at
Sandilane, but then came a rapid military retreat and by the end of
the month they were back at Alamein; only one locomotive was lost, ESR
2-6-0 590, which was unfit to travel and was blown up at Daba. However
in November there was an equally rapid advance with the line reopened
to Daba (9th), Matruh (13th), Capuzzo (20th) and Tobruk Road (1st
December). At this stage the Western Desert Extension Railway
(Similla-Tobruk) was being worked by two New Zealand Railway Operating
Companies, normally using steam to Capuzzo (maximum load 600 tons) and
diesels from there on (two per 500 ton train). During the fortnight
ending 12th December, 76 trains (3001 wagons) left Similla for
Capuzzo, and 56 trains (2102 wagons) left Capuzzo for Tobruk. Early in
1943 the line down to Tobruk Harbour was in regular use and from 1st
July the ESR took over the WDE as far as Capuzzo, the rest being at
that time operated by an Indian RE company.

With the Mediterranean route becoming virtually closed to Allied
shipping the pressure on Suez was enormous and two new railways were
built to alleviate this. The longer of these ran from Qena on the
upper Nile to the Red Sea at Safaga (map: page 15), a distance of 116
miles; surveys were completed in July 1941 and work started the
following month. The materials were supplied mostly from India,
resulting in a metre gauge being adopted, but the line was actually
built and operated by the ESR at Army expense. Through linkage was
achieved on 16th May 1942 but owing to a delay in supplying cistern
wagons the railway was not in operation until 1st July. The total cost
was £746,840 and £200 per month was paid to the Egyptian
Phosphate Company for running rights over the last section to Safaga
which used the route of that concern's existing line there. By the
beginning of 1944 the need for this railway, running through
inhospitable terrain, had ceased; the ESR did not want to purchase it
and it was closed from 11th February, being lifted later that year.

The other line was built for 71 miles across open desert along the
eastern side of the Suez Canal from Qantara down to El Shatt,
immediately opposite Suez, where new facilities were
constructed. Built to standard gauge by Australian RE, it was started
in June 1941 and completed by 1st July 1942, being operated by the ESR
from that date. At the end of July the new Firdan Bridge across the
Canal was tested and duly opened for traffic on 7th August; on the
same day the two ferries that had been used at Qantara ceased to
operate, and on 15th August a through passenger service Cairo-Haifa
via Firdan Bridge was inaugurated.

In November 1940 Australian Royal Engineers in Palestine began
reconditioning the 1.05m railway from Tulkarm to Afula, and a New
Zealand RE company ran 3 trains daily each way on that line from 6th
June to 13th October in connection with the operations in Syria. It
was then closed until October 1944 when Palestine Railways began to
operate goods trains between Tulkarm and Nablus, the cost of
reconditioning again being met by the War Dept. The Australians also
built a new 1.05m gauge railway in Jordan from Ma'an to Naqb Ashtar
(30 miles) using material recovered from the old Hijaz route; at the
same time the road onwards to the port of Aqaba was improved. This
line was completed on 16th March 1942 and maintained by PR, being
operated as a "siding" as it was not necessary to open it for normal
traffic.

The most interesting event in this area however was the decision to
construct a standard gauge link between Haifa and the railways of
Syria. This meant that stores and equipment could be moved quickly,
without transhipment problems due to change of gauge, from depots in
Egypt and Palestine right up to the Turkish border - and beyond if
necessary. Moreover it would also provide a through connection with
Iraq. In the event Turkey maintained its neutrality and refused
permission for British military stores to pass indiscriminately over
its section of the Aleppo-Mosul railway. Nevertheless locomotives were
transferred to and from Iraq by this route, and the line from Haifa
was also used to move ex-Middle East engines to Turkey after purchase
by that country. The first proposal was for a line from Haifa to
Rayak but a 1941 reconnaissance revealed construction difficulties
that would have taken far too long to overcome. So instead it was
decided to blast a route along the coast connecting Haifa with Beirut
and Tripoli; this involved some very difficult work negotiating the
steep cliffs where the various headlands met the sea. From Haifa to
Beirut the construction was carried out by South African engineers and
it is interesting to note that a temporary 1.05m gauge line was in use
in April 1942 on the 14 miles between Damour Bridge and Beirut so that
narrow gauge facilities at the latter place could be used for
supplying materials. In June the South Africans were transferred
elsewhere and the finishing touches were added by two New Zealand RE
companies. Regular military traffic started on 24th August 1942,
including three passenger services per week.

From Beirut to Tripoli construction was by Australian Royal Engineers,
except for the difficult Chekka tunnel which was built by a tunnelling
company recruited from South African miners for this special job. By
July 1942 the 14 miles from Chekka Cement Works to Tripoli were
already in use but the whole line from Beirut was not completed until
18th December; two days later General Alexander presided at the
official opening ceremony for the Azzib-Tripoli railway (the PR were
operating the Haifa-Azzib section). Some idea of the character of this
line can be gleaned from the fact that when on one occasion some
trucks became derailed near Sidon thus holding up 15 following trains
with important supplies, the action taken was to bring along a
travelling crane and tip all the offending stock over the edge into
the sea.

The Chekka headland above the railway tunnel.

5. SYRIA & LEBANON [pp. 61-71]

In 1891 a French company obtained a concession to build a railway
from Beirut to Damascus and this was soon merged with a Belgian
project (CF en Sync) for a line to Muzeinib serving the rich grain
area of the Hauran. Formed in Paris, the Societe des Chemins de fer
Ottomans Economiques de Beyrouth-Damas-Hauran at first planned a metre
gauge adhesion line but the difficulties involved in ascending the
Lebanon range behind Beirut resulted in the adoption of the Abt rack
system for part of the route. The new trace was less circuitous but
involved gradients of 1 in 14, and two reversals at Chouit-Araye and
Aley, on the rack sections between kilometres 6 and 47 (from
Beirut). [See footnote 1] The
summit of 5059 feet was reached at 38km after which the track
descended to Rayak (3100ft) before climbing again to 4636ft to cross
the Anti-Lebanon range; these two mountain areas, covered with snow
for many months each year, made it a very difficult line to
operate. The railway was actually built to a gauge of 1.05 metres and
was opened in July 1894 (Damascus-Muzeirib) and August 1895
(Beirut-Damascus). The early passenger services were restricted to one
each way daily and in 1898 journeys between Beirut and Damascus
normally took about nine hours for the 91 miles while the
Damascus-Muzeirib trip took four hours.

Two interesting short-wheelbase
Belgian 0-6-UT locomotives. Tramway Libanais 6 (above), noted at
Samakh (Tsemah) in 1942, was built by St Léonard in 1896. DHP 108
HERMON (below) was at Beirut in 1948 and had come from the Tubize
works in 1893. P.J. Bawcutt

Meanwhile in 1893 another concession had been granted for a standard
gauge railway DamascusHoms-Hama-Aleppo-Birecik, with a coastal branch,
which because of its obvious strategic importance was granted a
guarantee of receipts by the Turkish Government. In fact the scheme
was amended to cover a line from Rayak to Aleppo (where it would join
the Baghdad Railway), with a branch to Tripoli, and was carried out by
the same French company as before, the title being changed to Socit
Ottomane du Chemin de fer Damas-Hama et prolongements, or DHP for
short. Trains began running between Rayak and Ba'albek from 19th June
1902 but progress in general was slow and the line to Aleppo was not
completed until 1906; the branch to Tripoli was opened in June 1911.

Another interesting concern was the Tramway Libanais, a short 1.05m
gauge line along the coast northwards from Beirut, also managed by
the DHP. It had been started about 1895 with Tripoli as the
original objective but had only reached Mameltein by 1908, and the
rest of the project was only achieved 34 years later when the HBT
line was built, using much of the tramway route.

Three large snowsheds near Dahr el Baydar, close to the summit of the
Beirut-Riyak 1.05m gauge line. P.J. Bawcutt

With the outbreak of the 1914-18 war interest switched to the Baghdad
Railway and although the difficult sections through southern Turkey
were far from finished the line from Radjou to Jerablus, together with
the Aleppo branch, had been completed in December 1912. Progress had
then continued through Tel Ebiad (July 1914) and Tuem (June 1915) to
Rasel Am (July 1915), and finally Nusaybin (by October 1918). In 1917
the line to Tripoli had been lifted and the materials used elsewhere
and a similar fate had previously (1915) been suffered by the
Damascus-Muzeirib 1.05m gauge line which was in any case duplicated by
the Hijaz Railway, dealt with in the next section.

CFS 0-6-2T 031-804 (SLM 1894) at Damascus in November
1966; the original rack mechanise has been removed. A. T. Johnson

CEL class A 0-8-2T 33 (SLM 1906) at Rayak in 1966. Both the types on
this page were fully described in the Locomotive Magazine for 1910,
page 149. A. T. Johnson

When the war was over the situation was complicated by the
Turkish-Syrian border being drawn just to the south of the railway
line for most of the way. From 1922 that section, together with the
lines to Aleppo, formed part of a system worked by the French company
CF de CilicieNord Syrie, succeeded in 1928 by another French concern -
Sociêtè d'exploitation des CF Bozanti-Alep-Nissibine et
prolongements. The last named company was liquidated in July 1933 when
all its lines north of the border came under direct Turkish control
and those in Syria became known as Lignes Syriennes de Baghdad (LSB),
being operated as a subsidiary of DHP. The DHP, which had resumed
possession of its system in 1919, had reopened the Tripoli line in
October 1921; the Muzeirib line however was not worth relaying,
especially as the DHP took over the administration of all the Hijaz
Railway lines in Syria from 1st March 1924. Finally, one more line
must be mentioned here - the extension of the Baghdad route through
Syria from Nusaybin to Tel Ziouane (1933) and Tel Kotchek (in regular
use from May 1935). The construction of the Haifa-Beirut-Tripoli
railway has been covered in the previous section. In 1946 the
Government of Lebanon, by then an independent state, agreed to
purchase for £5 million the line from the Israel border at Naqoura
to Tripoli, the railway being operated by the DHP. It is interesting
to note here that the original Lebanese Tramway concession contained a
provision enabling the government to purchase the property if it was
proposed to construct a broad gauge coastal railway. In fact only the
Beirut-Tripoli section was fully used, the main traffic being cement
from Chekka, although there was some oil transported from a refinery
near Sidon. The only regular passenger services consisted of a weekly
sleeping car which joined the Taurus Express at Aleppo and the through
Beirut-Aleppo railcars belonging to Syria.

The rack locomotive in both these 1974 pictures is
0-10-OT 301 (SLM 1924) shown leaving the reversing station at Aley en
route for Bhamdoun, the next station up the line, and (below) crossing
the main road at Bhamdoun on a downward trip. P. J. Bawcutt

From 1st January 1961 all the railways in Lebanon became state-owned,
known as the Chemin de for de l'Etat Libanais (CEL). Traffic on the
1.05m line steadily declined and often the only passengers were Sunday
excursionists using coaches attached to a freight train; not
surprising perhaps when the train took two hours to get from Beirut to
Aley compared with 30 minutes by bus. More recently the fighting in
Lebanon has played havoc with communications and up-todate particulars
are not available,

This interesting 0-4-42T Mallet, CFS 02021-961 (Hartm 1906), was at
Damascus in 1966. The first part of the number indicates the axle
arrangement. A.T. Johnson

In Syria however the railways have flourished. Owned by the State
since 1956, and reorganised as CF Syriennes (CFS) from 1st January
1965, they have been considerably expanded (with Russian assistance)
in connection with the industrial development of the country. The
ports of Tartus and Latakia have been enlarged and they were connected
by rail to Akkari and Aleppo in 1968 and 1975 respectively. A huge
irrigation scheme is in progress involving a dam across the Euphrates
at Tabqa, and a new through railway has been completed from Aleppo to
the dam site (1968), and on to Raqqa (1972) and Deir ez Zor (1973),
finally reaching Qamishliye, on the old Baghdad route, in
1976. Another new line from Horns to Palmyra (where there are valuable
phosphate deposits) was completed in 1980, and work on a direct
connection between Horns and Damascus is now in progress.

DHP 0-8-0 24 (Cail 1906), beautifully maintained, at
Tripoli in 1944; the polished brass plates on the cab-side include one
for the names of the driver and fireman. P. J. Bawcutt

DHP 51 (Maff 1910), a much larger and more powerful 2-8-0
locomotive, was taken at Homs in the previous year.P.J. Bawcutt

The Tramway Libanais stock consisted of short-wheelbase tank
locomotives not unlike those built for the Hauran line by another
Belgian maker a few years previously. Only six appear to have worked
on the tramway and it seems likely that the other two were used on
Hijaz Railway construction (see next section).

DHP 1-12, eventually classified "B", were compound rack locomotives
specially provided for working the difficult section over the Lebanon
range. For the Rayak-Damascus trains a series of adhesion-only 2-6-OT
engines (later class "D") were used, and eight small 0-6-OTs had been
ordered for the Hauran trains. In 1906 more powerful locomotive
designs appeared - an eightcoupled compound rack locomotive and an
interesting Mallet type, also compound, for heavy trains over the
Anti-Lebanon section; both engines of the latter class are still
active today.

A contrast in motive power on the Lebanese system in
1974. 0-8-0 108 (Schich 1907) at Jubail, between Beirut and Tripoli,
has been rebuilt with the distinctive wide chimney mentioned on page
67. The lower picture shows diesel CEL 604 (EMD 1960) at
Beirut. P.J. Bawcutt

The 1914-18 war resulted in several engines being damaged and these
had all been written off stock by 1925. A series of new ten-coupled
rack locomotives appeared from 1924 onwards and as a result many of
the earlier "B" class engines had their rack mechanism removed, being
reclassified "BA". Steam traction has remained active on all the 1.05m
gauge lines although services generally are now on a much reduced
scale.

The DHP standard gauge stock was straightforward in design and
included some Baghdad Railway types used on the lines from Aleppo up
to the Turkish border. Then in 1939 the French decided to send
urgently to Syria fifty G8 0-8-0 engines which had been transferred to
France from Germany as reparations after the first world war; 48 of
these were actually received and quickly dominated the railway
scene. Some were rebuilt with an interesting blast pipe arrangement
previously tried out on earlier DHP engines, the most obvious external
feature being a single chimney markedly larger than normal in a
transverse direction (for particulars see the Railway Gazette 1939A,
page 134). Four WD 2-1 0-Os were purchased in 1946 after being on
loan, and one was frequently to be found hauling the Taurus Express
from Aleppo as far as the Turkish border. Steam continued in use on
some of the Syrian standard gauge lines until as late as 1976, after
which diesels reigned supreme.

On the standard gauge Syrian lines the largest engines were the
ex-WD 2-10-0s; 150-686 (NB 1944) was standing in front of the large
locomotive shed at Aleppo in November 1966. The four typical vehicles
(below) were at Homs, also in 1966, and from left to right comprised a
parcels van, a bogie composite, a four-wheel third and a service
carrriage.